


Soulbound

by RachelTikvah



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fantasy, Lesbian, Queer Fantasy, Sword lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24755803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RachelTikvah/pseuds/RachelTikvah
Summary: All her life, Tiffany has been running into the deep woods near her village to seek safety from those who mean her harm. And every time she does so, a mysterious lady knight appears to save her from the horrors beneath the forest canopy. But as she gets older and realizes that the knight herself hasn't aged a day, she starts to wonder what this could mean for her own destiny.
Kudos: 8





	Soulbound

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends,  
> I wrote this fic in one sitting after getting struck by a plot bunny during a tabletop roleplay session. It took 4.5 hours to write and nearly 5,000 words (I didn't get to bed until after 3am!), but it was so worth it. It's a story about lesbian knights, and I promise that it has a happy ending. It's one of my only original works, so I really hope that you all like it! Please let me know what you think in the comments, especially if you'd like to see more original queer fantasy works from me in the future. Thanks!

**Soulbound**

By Rachel Tikvah

***

Kira was putting the soup on, and the sun was beginning to cast orange hues against the evening sky. “Honey? Do you mind getting some herbs from the forest edge? We need basil, I think. Oh! And some mint while you’re at it, that would go beautifully with the apple tart that we made together the other night.”

She heard footsteps from behind her and looked away from the stove to see her wife, Chaya, smiling at her.

“Hey! You don’t need to turn around so quickly. I was perfectly fine admiring you from behind.”

Kira giggled a little bit at that and kissed her wife on the lips. Chaya always knew how to make her laugh.

“Alright, love. I’ll get the herbs for you. I should be back before dark. I love you!”

“I love you too!”

She turned back to the pot in front of her and heard the front door swing closed a moment later. She spent the rest of the evening getting the meal ready, but something nagged at her as she set two places at the table. _She should be home by now,_ Kira thought to herself. After waiting a couple more minutes and getting more and more worried, she decided to head out and investigate. The soup could get cold for all she cared, as long as Chaya was safe.

Kira was met by the cool night air as she stepped outside. It was early spring, and the world was just starting to wake up once more. She could hear a few songbirds singing their last sonatas of the day as she grabbed the kerosene lantern from the woodshed and strode down a familiar trail to the edge of the woods. But when she reached the spot where Chaya should have been collecting herbs, nobody was there. Kira’s heart pounded in her ears as she surveyed the area, eventually finding what she feared most: a scrap of her wife’s dress torn on some brambles a little way into the undergrowth. Something terrible had happened here.

Lifting her lantern higher, Kira could now see that there was a clear trail of trampled vegetation leading further into the woods. Forget dinner, first she needed to make sure that her wife was okay! _I am definitely not dressed for this,_ she thought as she lifted her legs over the bushes at the forest edge and pushed herself onward.

Stumbling every now and then, she hurried along as fast as she could. Her legs ached, but she couldn’t stop. There was no way that she would relent for even a second when that second could be the difference between finding Chaya or happening upon her mangled remains. She had heard stories of fell creatures in the forest—beasts that devoured the very souls of their victims, and wolves that just weren’t right. Everyone knew of someone in the next town over who had lost a loved one to the things that dwelled just beyond the lights at the periphery of their village. Kira was scared, but that fear pushed her ever onward as she raced down the makeshift path of trampled branches in pursuit of her beloved.

Eventually, she reached the end of the trail. It dead ended in a forest clearing, deep beneath the trees. Her lantern was the only source of light that she could see, as the canopy overhead swallowed up even the radiance of the full moon. Before her stood the hungry maw of a deep cave. She had no choice. She knew that she would never forgive herself if she left Chaya for dead, no matter the risk. Kira took her first hesitant steps inside.

The lantern cast odd shadows on the walls of the cavern as Kira tread as quietly as she could, surveying her surroundings. Her heart sinking, she realized that her worst fears had come true. The antechamber of the cave was crammed with all sorts of treasure, taken from wayward travelers throughout the ages. She saw chests of gold, tapestries strewn about the floor, and—with a start—the mummified husk of a knight slumped over against one wall. The corpse still gripped a sword tightly in one hand, and…was it a trick of the light? No, it wasn’t. The hilt of the sword was glowing a faint, pure white.

For a moment, Kira stared at the sword in curiosity. What made it glow like that? It wasn’t long after that she realized the sword was staring back at her. The glow suddenly seemed more direct, more intelligent. She flinched, startled, when she heard a colorless voice resonate inside her head.

_I have seen the beast take a young woman into its den. I presume that you’re here to rescue her, but you have nothing to fight with. Take me, I can help you. We can save her together._

Kira took a second’s pause, weighing her options. She _could_ walk further into the cave unarmed, maybe getting herself _and_ Chaya killed. Or she could take a strange, magical weapon up on its offer and end up paying some unknown price down the road.

_What are you waiting for? We mustn’t tarry!_

The voice cut through her mind again, and she knew that she didn’t really have a choice after all. Whatever it took, she was going to save her wife. Her pulse thrummed loudly in her ears. She walked quietly over to the mummified knight and pried open its fingers, cringing inwardly as she tried to ignore the texture of the skin and wrested the sword out of its hand. The moment that her fingers wrapped around the handle, she felt a surge of energy race up her arm and throughout her body. It wasn’t unpleasant, maybe even refreshing—like the first swig of cool water after hours of thirst. Her eyes fell to the hilt of the sword for the second as she saw the glowing white hue change to a deep, sky blue. Feeling far stronger than before, she hurried further into depths of the cavern.

She felt it even before her eyes could adjust—the aura of death and decay about the place. She was in the monster’s den. Ahead of her, hunched over some dark altar was a pitch-black behemoth of terrible size. But she didn’t pay the beast much mind at first—she was much more focused on her wife, lying prone on the accursed stone slab. Between Chaya’s motionless form and the gnashing jaws of the monster that bent over her, a single glowing green thread hung taut in the air. Kira knew immediately that she was looking at her wife’s soul, and that she hadn’t a second to waste.

_We are too late to save her if the beast is already feeding. But we can still slay the monster and protect countless more! All you must do is sever the soul while the creature is vulnerable. Doing so will poison it to its very essence, and free the woods from its grasp forever._

“What? No! I can’t do that! That’s my wife—I’d be killing her.” Kira looked helplessly onward, unsure of what to do.

_You must! She is already lost, but we can still kill the beast!_

But Kira just stood there, rooted to the ground as she watched the monster feed. Then, she felt that same cool influence wash up her arm, down through her torso and into her legs. Without thinking, she began to move forward.

_If you will not slay the beast, then I shall have to do so myself._

In an instant, Kira’s left hand raised up and brought the sword down on Chaya’s glowing thread. There was a terrible, sickening snapping sound, and the beast recoiled in agony. It stumbled backward, but Kira had only one thing on her mind. Suddenly in control of her own body again, she rushed to her wife’s side and grabbed her hand. Chaya’s eyes fluttered open.

It looked like she was fighting to stay conscious. She tried to speak a couple of times, but all she could muster were a few hoarse croaks as she stared with soulful, sad eyes into Kira’s own. Finally, she managed to mouth the words “I love you.”

“I love you too, Chaya! Stay with me! We can go home together! The soup’s cold by now, but we can heat it up! Please, please just hang on.” Kira pleaded desperately, but she saw the life leave Chaya’s eyes and the woman’s head slumped to the side. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Hot tears blurred her vision as she rose to her feet once again.

Kira wiped off her eyes and looked up after a while to see that the beast was now nothing more than a puddle of black ichor upon the cave floor. She stared at it dispassionately for a number of minutes, then kissed her wife once more—first on the forehead, and then again on the lips. They still held warmth, but they wouldn’t for much longer. Finally, she gently slid her wife’s eyelids closed and walked back into the cool night air. She paid no mind to returning home. Her home had died with Chaya. Now, she had a mission—nobody deserved to suffer like she had. As this thought ran through her mind, a gauntlet of gleaming silver metal flowed from the sword still in her hand and encircled her wrist with the finality of cold iron.

***

Time passed, and people moved on as they so often do. There were crops to see to and farmer’s markets to attend. New children were born, and social mores changed. Eventually, there came a time when not a single living soul remembered the two women who loved each other so dearly and lived together in a cottage at the edge of town. Centuries slipped by in the blink of an eye. And eventually, a new story began. The story of a little girl.

Tiffany had been made fun of in the first years of primary school for preferring dungarees and hand-me-down shirts over the floral dresses that many of the other girls wore around the village. But it wasn’t until she was about eight that anybody really decided to lash out in a more physical way. She was on the playground, and an older kid whose name she didn’t know got together a few of his friends to beat her up. As they advanced on her, she did the only thing she _could_ do—she ran.

She ran through town, with the boys right behind her. When she reached the edge of the woods, she ran in without hesitation. The bullies yelled at her from where they had stopped short, but she kept on running. _Cowards,_ she thought as her steps brought her further and further under the forest canopy. Soon, although it was the middle of the day, only a little sunlight filtered through the leaves overhead. Eventually, she came to a part of the woods that she didn’t recognize. The trunks of the trees were gigantic, and she could barely hear the sounds of the animals that ran wild in the sunnier parts of the wood. She gave a start as she heard a cool, singsong voice behind her.

“Little girl, so far from home. Come with me, I can help you get back. Surely, those you love are terribly worried about you.”

The words sounded sincere, but they had an unmistakable edge to them that she couldn’t place. She whirled around to see a sleek grey wolf behind her. But…no. Its face was too long, its gait too measured, its smile too knowing. Something just wasn’t right about it. It had a hungry gleam in its eyes.

“Um, no thanks. I can find my own way home.”

“But the way is so far! And I would hate for such a young, _tender_ girl to run into something untoward. There are many monsters in these woods, you know.”

With every word, the creature was getting closer to her. It encircled her, causing her to slowly pivot her body to continue meeting its gaze. Then, with the swiftness of lightning, it pounced forward. But Tiffany had only just braced herself when she saw the not-wolf batted out of the air as one would a swat away a mosquito. A long, silver sword had been slammed hard against the creature’s midsection. The monster took one look at its assailant, and ran back into the trees with a fearful yelp. Her heart still beating quickly, the little girl turned her attention to the person holding the sword.

Her rescuer was a lady knight, standing tall and looking down at her with a neutral, but not cold, gaze. She had a satisfied air to her, and her scarred right arm told the stories of many encounters just like this one. Her left arm, midsection and legs were covered in full-plate silver armor. Tiffany felt immediately safer with this woman watching over her. Timidly, she met the knight’s gaze.

“Um, thank you. For, uh, s-saving me.”

For a few moments, the knight didn’t respond. Then, she gave the girl a shallow smile.

“It’s not safe in these woods, little one. The threat has passed, but it will return. I will guide you back to safety.”

The two walked in silence back to the forest’s edge, until Tiffany could hear the sounds of squirrels scampering up the trees again. When she was finally able to see the sky once more, it was streaked with pink. With a start, she realized that her parents were probably very worried about her. She looked at her hero once more.

“Thanks again! What’s your name? Mine’s Tiffany.”

But the knight just looked at her with a steady gaze. For a fleeting moment Tiffany thought that she saw a note of sadness in those eyes, but it passed quickly. “Just stay safe. You might get hurt next time. It’s lucky that I was there to save you.”

“Well, thanks anyway. I’m glad that you saved me.”

The knight tilted her head to one side, as if confused. “It’s my duty. I wouldn’t ever consider doing otherwise.”

And then she turned around and walked back into the forest. Tiffany hurried home, and within a few weeks, she had convinced herself that the lady knight was nothing but a dream. But her memory of the encounter never truly faded.

***

Years passed, and Tiffany was fourteen when she went to a friend’s house on the other side of the village for a sleepover. But after she woke up to find him bent over her, reaching out to touch her chest, she ran out of the cabin without even grabbing her belongings. She considered going home, but the thought of her parents being mad scared her even more than the thought of what her friend might have been planning to do to her. With nowhere else to go, and sure that he would find her if she stood outside for long enough, she ran into the forest once more.

Once she was in the embrace of the forest canopy, she slowed her pace but kept walking forward. She didn’t know where she was going, but she was so shaken from the near-miss that she just kept moving. Eventually, she realized with a start that she had reached a part of the forest that she didn’t recognize. The tree roots rose out of the ground like serpents, and exotic flowers filled the air with their strange perfume. After a few more minutes of walking, Tiffany found her way into a clearing.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the pale light of the full moon as it enveloped the ground. Suddenly, she realized that she wasn’t alone. Across the clearing from her, she saw the distinctive glint of moonlight on metal. Her mind raced as she decided whether or not to run, but then the figure fully stepped out of the shadows. Tiffany realized with a start that she was looking at the same knight that had saved her all those years ago. _So it wasn’t a dream after all!_

The woman advanced, and Tiffany noticed something else that she hadn’t during their first encounter—the knight was incredibly beautiful. Her armor wrapped around her body in a very pleasing fashion, and the way that her lips were slightly parted gave her an air of mystery and allure. But Tiffany chased those thoughts out of her head. Thoughts like that were frowned upon back at the village, so it was better just not to think them at all. Suddenly, she looked up in surprise. She was so lost in her own thoughts she hadn’t noticed that the knight was now standing right in front of her.

“It isn’t safe to come to these woods at night, Tiffany. You should not have come back.”

Tiffany’s stomach flipped when she realized the full meaning of the knight’s words—she remembered her.

“I didn’t really have a choice. This guy I thought I trusted was going to do something to me. I had nowhere else to go.”

“Are you okay?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Well, anywhere but here would have been safer. You should know that.”

“Then why are you here, if the forest is so dangerous?”

“I must protect. It is my duty.”

On some level, Tiffany knew that was going to be her answer. So she asked the only other question that she could think of.

“Can I stay here tonight? With you? You can take me back in the morning.”

The knight tilted her head to the side again, looking as confused as she had all those years ago. Tiffany noticed out of the corner of her eye that the woman’s sword had a glowing blue hilt. _Okay, file one more thing into the ‘people will think I’m a loony’ category._

Eventually, the knight nodded. Tiffany found a tree at the edge of the clearing and sat down against it. She didn’t know when exactly she fell asleep, but she awoke the next morning to find the woman standing a small ways away. She felt a surge of relief when she realized that she hadn’t been abandoned while she slept, and that the knight really wasn’t just a dream. The two walked back to the edge of the woods, and the knight bid Tiffany a silent farewell before walking out of sight back into the trees. This time, the girl watched her hero until she could no longer make her out among the shadows. Then, she walked home and hoped dearly that her parents hadn’t caught wind of her late-night disappearance. She only realized days later that she had forgotten to ask her hero’s name.

***

Yet more years passed. Tiffany’s friend apologized her to her shortly after the incident, but things were never the same between them. Eventually, she blossomed into a young woman. She spent her late teens rejecting proposal after proposal. She didn’t really know why, but she just wasn’t that interested in being with a man. She always fell just short of figuring out why exactly that was, perhaps intentionally. After a while her parents got tired of having her around the house and decided to betroth her to an older man in the village who had recently become a widower himself. Tiffany was twenty-two when she was informed of the arrangement.

She pleaded with her parents, but they maintained that it was in her best interest. After all, they said, she would have a bright future with a wealthy older man looking after her. He himself had promised that she would never want for anything, and she believed it. But she also knew that she would never be happy while she was forced to be his wife. Besides, she was worried about what had _really_ happened to his last wife—she hadn’t really seemed all that old when she passed. On the night before the wedding, while the men of the village were partying in the tavern, she took a desperate chance and put her plan in motion.

As soon as she was sure that she was alone for the evening, she grabbed a sturdy hiking pack and filled it with provisions. Stable cheese, hardy bread, and salted jerky were all wrapped in separate pieces of cloth. She filled one skin with water, and another with wine. Some fishing line and a hunting knife. Extra clothes made up the bulk of the pack, most of them masculine. After a moment’s hesitation, she pulled a single deep-blue bellflower from a bouquet that her fiancé had given her and threaded it through a loop in one strap of her pack. Finally, she was ready to depart.

Tiffany fled under the cover of darkness into the cool twilight air of early spring. She didn’t know that she was retracing the steps tread by another desperate woman a very long time ago. She approached the edge of the forest with some hesitation, braced herself, and strode inside.

She was clothed in a sturdy outfit that she had sewn in secret over the weeks leading up to this journey. She wore hardy trousers of durable cloth, and a work shirt tailored to her frame. Over top was a warm coat woven from the wool that she had helped her father shear from his flock earlier that year. The barbs of the prickly vegetation merely glanced off her legs, and she made it deep into the forest quickly and without hassle.

Once again, she reached the part of the forest that she could no longer recognize. The bark of the trees was twisted into patterns that formed strange dizzying images, and the sounds of peculiar animals and insects filled the air with an alien ambience. Seeking out a clearing, she emerged from the wooded cover and out into the open.

It was darker this time, with only the stars and a think sliver of moonlight to keep her company. And there she waited, hoping against all hope that she would soon see a familiar face under the night sky. Eventually, movement on the other side of the clearing caught her eye as the starlight reflected off a sturdy metal gauntlet. Her heart soared! She opened her mouth to call out a greeting, then closed it again. Something was wrong.

Out of the undergrowth strode a thin, tall knight wearing a suit of armor forged from obsidian-black steel. A helm covered their face, but two points of sinister red light shone out from beneath the grille. The fell knight brandished a sword of their own, its hilt glowing that same evil scarlet as the fiend advanced on Tiffany. She tried to run, but she tripped on a tree root protruding from the ground. She whirled around just in time to see the figure silently raising their sword over their head, preparing to strike---

But then the sound of metal-on-metal rang out into the still night air. From the side of the clearing, Tiffany’s own knight had approached. She deftly swung her blade again and again, dueling with the spectre that had moments ago sought to end Tiffany’s life. Finally, her sword hit true. It carved through a seam in the aberrant knight’s armor, and while the villain was caught off guard she separated their head from their shoulders with a single arc of gleaming metal. The fight was over.

As her hero took a moment to breathe deeply and gather herself once more, Tiffany couldn’t help but notice that she was as gorgeous as she had ever been. In fact, it seemed as if she had not aged a single day since she saved her from the wolf-like monster fourteen years ago and stood sentinel over her years after that. With a sudden rush of emotion, Tiffany realized for the first time that she longed to spend her entire life with her knight—as impossible as that was.

Eventually, the woman met her eyes with a serious gaze. “I thought I told you never to come here again. Why will you not listen?”

“I came to flee a man who sought my hand in marriage. To let him have his way with me would be to consign myself to death. I knew that I would find you here, so I took a chance.”

Tiffany’s hero stood before her silently, looking as though she were deep in thought. In that moment, the young woman remembered something. She felt around until her fingers closed around a supple stem, and she pulled the bellflower out from her pack.

“I brought this for you. It’s blue, like your sword. And like your eyes.”

The knight said nothing, but didn’t make any effort to move away as Tiffany placed the deep blue flower into her wavy brown hair.

“I can’t go back home. I don’t know if you can understand that, but I’m telling you that I’m not going back. And if you try to make me, I’ll just run into danger again. You wouldn’t want that, I know! It isn’t safe for me there anymore. Can I just…stay with you again tonight? I promise, in the morning you can take me to any other village. Just please, don’t make me go back to my own.”

Again, the knight was silent. Tiffany propped her pack up against one of the trees at the edge of the clearing, as far away as possible from the headless body of her would-be killer. Resting her head on the soft cloth of the bag, she drifted off to sleep with the reassuring knowledge that she wasn’t alone.

Tiffany awoke to the sound of birdsong and the glow of early-morning light. Looking around, she saw that her knight was sitting cross-legged not far away from where she had lay sleeping. Groggily, she opened her pack and made a small breakfast from some of her rations. She offered some to the knight, but she politely shook her head. A swig of water reinvigorated her, and she got up to survey her surroundings in the light of day.

The body of the black phantom didn’t look nearly as sinister under the light of dawn. Still, she approached it cautiously, drawing courage from the fact that her knight didn’t say anything to stop her. Once she was closer, she realized that the sword wielded by the villain lay a short distance away from the armored corpse. The hilt, she noted, was no longer glowing a deep red. Instead, it had a white radiance to it. She reached out to grab it and was startled when she heard a voice from behind her.

“You don’t want to do that.”

Whirling around, she saw that her knight had quietly approached her. She was just as gorgeous in the brilliance of a new day as she had been under the starlight. With a note of satisfaction, Tiffany noticed that the woman hadn’t yet taken the flower out of her hair.

“Okay. I’ll listen to what you have to say… _if_ you tell me your name.”

The knight hesitated for a second, then finally responded. “…Kira. People used to call me Kira.” There was a faint chord of sadness in her voice.

“Thank you, Kira.” Tiffany lingered on her name, feeling it between her lips. “Why should I be worried about touching a sword?”

“That is no ordinary sword. Like the one I wield, it holds within it a soul. To take up that sword would be to assent to a lifelong mantle. And you might not like how long that life would become after you accepted that call. I would caution you to leave the sword behind and allow me to escort you somewhere safe on the side of the forest opposite your old village. Then, ideally, we would never meet again.”

Tiffany thought that she detected a melancholy to Kira’s final sentence, but it might have been wishful thinking.

“You say that I wouldn’t want to take up a mantle like yours, but I have nothing left to my name. And I want to help people too, just like you’ve helped me. Haven’t you done a lot of good since you found your sword?”

“Yes, but…”

“And haven’t you made the world a safer place because of it?”

“That is true, but…”

Kira stammered, trying to get a word in. But Tiffany was having none of it.

“What if I told you that I _wanted_ to answer the call? To let the sword do whatever it will to me, if it lets me do as much good as you? If I were to take up that mantle, would you stay with me? Fight alongside me?”

There was a long moment of hesitation as Kira contemplated this. Finally, she answered. “Yes. I believe I would.”

That was all that Tiffany needed to hear. She grabbed hold of the sword’s handle, lifting the blade and drawing it close to her. Before her eyes, the hilt changed from pure white to a bright, hopeful yellow. She felt warmth radiating out from it and up through her arm, making her entire body feel like it was awash in sunlight. Then, she turned to face her hero again.

She approached Kira, and the elder knight didn’t move away. Soon, they were just inches away from one another. Tiffany reached one hand up, tenderly cupping the side of Kira’s face. And then, she brought it to hers. In a moment that felt as if it were drawn out into a blissful eternity, their lips met in a soft, gentle kiss. When they finally pulled away from one another, deep blue eyes locked with soft amber, they knew that neither of them would be alone ever again.


End file.
